Deirdre nodded, not quite meeting her father’s eyes. But when she turned away, she gave the Englishman one long last look of enmity. He was responsible for the injured man lying in the priest hole. At last she understood why her father hated the English, for the anger roiling in her breast made her want to scratch and bite the officer.
“If you wish to be difficult, I can see to it that your family is delayed indefinitely at the barracks in Cork,” she heard the Englishman say as she hurried up the narrow winding stairwell. “I’d not care to have my womenfolk subjected to the indignity. Will you allow the search?”
“Search anywhere ye please! And may ye find the Devil himself at the end of it!” Deirdre heard her father answer as she reached the top.
“We will, sir. And when we do, we’ll hang him!”
The skin on Deirdre’s arms puckered and she shivered
in fright as she stood on the landing. They would hang him! The English would hang her stranger!
She glanced up the stairwell that led to the nursery and then back down. Unlike her father, she did not believe that the English would fail to find the priest hole.
Her stranger could not be the murderer. He was the embodiment of a daydream come to life. Somehow, without her willing it, she had conjured him up. But who would believe her? Certainly not the silver-eyed English officer. Perhaps not even her father, who refused to listen to her tales of fairies and disturbing visions. Childish fancy, he called them. Yet, the man in the stables was real enough.
“I must do something!” she whispered to herself, and, seizing a candle from the hall sconce, she hurried toward the servants’ stairwell, which was a back way into the Great Hall.
*
Pain was the only definable sensation within Killian MacShane as he regained consciousness. The pain was excruciating. It crushed his lungs and radiated out to numb his arms and legs. He was helpless against the stabbing that caught him unprepared each time he drew a breath. Tears pricked his closed eyes. No. He would not cry. He had witnessed and suffered too much to shame himself with the cowardice of tears. If he was dying, perhaps it was best. This sliding down into the red seafoam of pain flooding him was not so difficult. Then, at last, it would be over.
Yet, even as he gave up to the rich dark agony, his body resisted, coughing to eject from his lungs the fluid that threatened to choke him.
“Shh! You mustn’t make a sound!”
The cool small hand that touched Killian’s cheek and then pressed against his mouth surprised him and disturbed the rhythm of his spasm, and his coughing stopped as his eyes flew open. Looking down at him through the dimness was a pair of serious sea-green eyes set in a child’s face.
Deirdre smiled as she saw his eyes open. In the flickering light of the candle she held, he did not seem nearly as
frightening or as huge as he had in the stables. Not that it mattered. Perhaps, if she protected him, the wee folk would in turn protect her family.
She began awkwardly petting his sweaty cheek. “You must hide yourself, fairy. The English have come.”
Killian blinked, unable to fathom her speech. Who was she, this child awash in a sea of golden crisp waves? He tried to lift his head but pain shot through him again, making giddy eddies in his brain and muddling his thoughts.
Where was he? Nothing in the dimness looked familiar. The curved walls were of stone and had no windows. Was he in prison? If so, what was a child doing with him?
Gradually his attention wandered back to the child bending over him. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“Shh! English!” She looked up as footsteps sounded in the room overhead.
When they faded, she bent close to him and said, “You’re a fairy. I know it because I conjured you. Only I didn’t mean it. Save yourself and remember that I was the one who helped you.”
The last thing he thought he could do was move, but suddenly the child at his side began shoving him.
I
must be mad with pain
,
Killian thought as the girl shoved ineffectually at him. It was not possible that she thought him a spirit. Perhaps
she
was the fairy. ’Twas said fairy women were golden-haired and as tiny as children. If only his head and chest did not hurt so badly he might be able to sort things out.
“I mean you no harm. I can prove to you I’m a friend of the wee folk,” Deirdre exclaimed in excited tones that her whisper scarcely muted. Reaching up, she began unfastening her bodice.
“There!” she cried, leaning over until her shoulder was only an inch above his nose. “You see? I’ve been kissed by the fairies!”
Before Killian’s blurred gaze swam a red mark no bigger than a ha’penny. It rode the crest of her small round shoulder. Why she should show it to him he could not imagine.
Deirdre pushed him again. “Please leave! They’ll hang
us all if they find you!” she whispered thickly as tears roughened her voice and filled her eyes.
Through the thick mist of pain her words struck a rational chord within Killian. Yes, the English soldiers would certainly hang the men of this household if they found him hiding here. He could not do that to them, to the child, who had offered him aid.
Rousing himself with a strength he had not expected to possess, he rolled from his side to a sitting position. The bandages held, though piercing pains robbed him momentarily of breath.
“Aye! Flee!” Deirdre encouraged, pulling on his sleeve as though she could lift him single-handedly.
Killian sucked in air and hoisted himself to his knees, moaning softly when he would rather have cried out his agony. The room began to spin slowly but he fought the vertigo. “Where…do…I hide?” he whispered.
Deirdre stood up beside him as the clatter of more boots entered the Great Hall beyond the hidden door. “Don’t you know?” She looked around wildly, half-expecting an exit magically to appear, but the flickering candlelight revealed only roughhewn walls. The room was barely seven feet deep and three feet wide. It was not meant to house a man for more than a few hours.
Air!
Deirdre looked up and saw the black cavern of the air vent in shadow behind a protruding boulder in the ceiling.
There was another way out of this hiding place, one long forgotten until she had stumbled upon it while playing by herself several months before. It was an air shaft. She had found she could climb it by putting her back against one side and bracing herself with hands and feet on the other. As agile as a monkey, she had climbed its height to find that it led to a false bottom in an upper-floor room. When Brigid found out about her discovery, she had blocked the exit and forbidden Deirdre ever to use it again. But if Deirdre could climb it, so could this man.
She grabbed him by the sleeve and pointed. “Up there! You must climb up the shaft.”
Killian raised his head and looked at the narrow opening
and knew he would never have realized that it was there if not for the child. Even so, he doubted he could rise to his feet, much less climb the shaft. Yet, he had to try.
Deirdre watched him place one foot under himself, her heart hammering so violently within her chest that she was certain it would become audible. He was sweating; it ran down into his eyes and pasted his thin beard to the hollows of his face. When he tried to rise, he began to shiver, his face graying with the strain.
“I cannot!” he muttered through clenched teeth and collapsed back onto his knee.
“Aye, you can!” Deirdre whispered urgently. After leaning her candle against the wall, she reached out to place his right arm about her shoulders. “Try again. Hurry!” she commanded, using her father’s authoritative tone of voice. She could not say precisely why, but perhaps because she had willed him here, she knew she could make him do as she bid.
Killian accepted her support to please her and found to his great surprise that she was the anchor he needed. The ceiling was too low to allow him to stand upright. Raising his left arm, Killian felt for the opening and measured its diameter with his hand. It was less than three feet across. He knew that even if he were not injured, he could not hoist himself high enough off the ground to enter the shaft and get a purchase with his knees and feet.
“I can’t…make it, lass.”
“You can with help,” Deirdre said softly. Before, she had used a chair drawn in from the dining table, but now they did not have that luxury. Without a word, she dropped to the ground, tucked her knees under her chest, and balanced herself with her hands.
Killian stared at her as though she had lost her mind. He could not use her as a step stool. His weight would break her back.
“Hurry!” Deirdre hissed just before the candle flame guttered and left the passage in utter darkness.
Killian did not move. The sudden darkness had cost him his sense of equilibrium and the swirling void made him feel like a man on the edge of a precipice.
“Take your boots off,” Deirdre encouraged, growing impatient with the stubborn man. “I’ve borne Ian O’Casey on me back and he’s twice the size of you.” When he did not answer, she felt around in the dark until she found his feet.
“Lift,” she directed, and when he did, she tugged the first of his boots off. When the second was removed, she pulled on his leg to direct him to her. “Climb! Now!”
Suddenly, boot steps sounded again, this time much nearer.
Deirdre swung her head toward the hidden doorway. Someone had come into the dining room. Before she could encourage him again, she heard a scraping at the hidden door. They had been found.
Killian, too, realized that they were about to be discovered, and his instinct for self-preservation took over. He ripped a piece of cloth from his tattered clothing and stuck it between his teeth. Once more he reached for and found the shaft. Gently he felt for the child with his toe.
“Brace yourself, lass,” he whispered and placed his foot on her back. If he was careful and did not tax her too long, perhaps she could hold his weight for a moment. There would be only one chance.
The scraping ceased and was replaced by the
whack
of a gun butt or an ax against the stone doorway.
Killian hoisted himself up into the shaft with a lunge meant to take some of the weight from the child beneath him. The impetus launched him hip-high into the flue, and he slammed his back against the wall as his left hand shot out to brace him there. Stars exploded behind his eyelids as pain jabbed him like a knife blade, but his cry was muted by his gag.
For a moment, he hung suspended, his muscles quivering and seeming to melt under the pressure of his weight. Then, miraculously, he felt her hands direct his feet to her shoulders and she supported him from below.
“Climb!” called the childish voice from the darkness below.
If it had not taken too much effort, he would have thanked her, but all his concentration was upon following
her orders. It seemed to take hours, years, to move an inch, yet she stayed beneath him, pushing and supporting him until he had one knee braced against the cold damp stone.
A little more
,
he told himself. Just a little more and he would be out of sight. His back was being rubbed raw by the wall and he could feel a trickle of what might be blood or sweat down his flanks. Straining until he thought his eyes would pop out of his head, he lifted his loose leg up and pressed it against the wall. There, he was stuck, wedged in like a peg in a hole.
A moment later he was prodded in the behind. “Take your boots,” she called up to him. “And do not move!”
Killian caught his boot tops between his thighs and pulled them up, too exhausted even to speak, much less to move.
*
Lord Fitzgerald had thought he could restrain himself by visiting his wife’s rooms while the English searched his home, but when he heard the work of axes in the Great Hall he lost his temper.
“What on God’s earth do ye mean, demolishing me property?” he cried as he strode into the room where two English soldiers were applying axes to the back of the fireplace.
Captain Garret looked up with a satisfied smile. “We’re searching, as you so graciously gave us permission to do.”
Lord Fitzgerald clenched his fists. “I did not give ye permission to pull me house down about me ears! Cease that at once!”
“Forgive me, but I cannot,” Garret replied. “Your cousin was kind enough to recall that there was once a hiding place behind this wall. A priest hole, he tells me.”
Lord Fitzgerald raked his cousin with a blighting glance. “Ye’ve a queer memory, cousin. Ye’re in error.”
Sir Neil mopped his brow with a handkerchief and then smiled uncertainly at his cousin. “You will remember that I once spent a summer here when we were children. We played behind there.” He pointed to the fireplace. “Your
father found us after hours of searching. We had tripped the lock and could not get out.”
Lord Fitzgerald nodded sharply. “Aye. Me father blistered both our behinds for the lark. I’d have thought the memory would have dampened yer interest in the place.”
Captain Garret turned back to his host. “Have you perchance learned the method to open it?” He indicated the fireplace. “My men and I are tired and anxious to be away to a place that offers the basic amenities of civilized life. If you cannot help us, I am ready to resort to gunpowder.”